


White Blank Page

by jaradel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Multi, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaradel/pseuds/jaradel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock may have destroyed Moriarty's web, but while he was gone, he lost the most important person in his life.</p><p>WARNING: SPOILERS for Sherlock Series 3 Episode 2, "The Sign of Three". DO NOT READ if you are trying to stay spoiler free!</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Blank Page

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Challenge 3 of [Let's Write Sherlock](http://letswritesherlock.tumblr.com). WARNING: MAJOR SERIES 3 SPOILERS WITHIN. I went to Comic-Con, and I saw the clip from S3E2, and that pretty much forms the basis of this fic, so if you are trying to stay spoiler free, PLEASE DO NOT READ. I won't be offended, I promise.
> 
> I didn't want to write this fic, I really didn't. This fic is precisely the type of fic I've been avoiding reading myself, but I was listening to my mp3s on shuffle the other day and "White Blank Page" was playing, and the plot bunny gave me a vicious bite and wouldn't let go until I'd written this. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry, because this is 1300+ words of angst and pain that I've been trying to cope with ever since they announced the casting at the beginning of filming for series 3.
> 
> Unbeta-ed, all mistakes are mine.

_**Can you lie next to her** _   
_**And give her your heart, your heart** _   
_**As well as your body** _

__

          Sherlock was alone.

          It wasn’t like he hadn’t been alone while he had been – away, for lack of a better word – but this was a different sort of alone, the sort of alone that a person feels when they are bereft of the company of the one person who makes them feel whole. He sighed, and turned over to face the back of the sofa so that he couldn’t see the emptiness of the flat, pulling his blue dressing gown (John hadn’t gotten rid of anything of Sherlock’s except the science equipment and his experiments – _sentiment_ ) around his still-too-thin pyjama-clad body.

          John no longer lived here, and the void left by his absence threatened to suffocate Sherlock. He had moved out of 221B Baker Street six months before Sherlock came back, and moved in with Mary Morstan, his girlfriend – now his fiancée. The detective squeezed his eyes shut, willing away the images that caused an uncomfortable tightness in his throat.

          John, having dinner with Mary.

          John, proposing to Mary.

          John, kissing Mary.

          John, lying in bed with Mary.

          John, making love to….

  
**_And can you lie next to her_ **   
**_And confess your love, your love_ **   
**_As well as your folly_ **

          Sherlock should have expected it – after all, John had thought he was dead. John was a soldier; he would not give up on his life just because his best friend died. That didn’t make the pain in Sherlock’s heart any easier to bear. Had he really expected everything to be the same when he returned? That nothing would have changed, that John would still be living in the flat, and that they could just pick up where they left off? _  
_

Whatever he had expected, it certainly wasn’t what had happened today. John – wonderful, loyal, forgiving John – had come over that morning and asked Sherlock to be his best man. He had told Sherlock that he wanted the two people he loved most standing with him at his wedding – Mary, and Sherlock. With that one sentence, that one quiet declaration, John had done the one thing that very few people had ever managed to do; he had rendered Sherlock speechless.

_John loves me – but not the way he loves Mary._

          That realisation, that John loved him, shattered Sherlock like nothing else had ever done. Standing there and watching John marry someone else – _anyone else_ – would be even more painful than when he had stood on the roof of St Bart’s, lied to John and forced his best friend to watch him plunge to what appeared to be his death. Yet just as John could never deny Sherlock anything, so Sherlock could not deny John this. He supposed it was his penance for hurting his friend, his best friend, the only person in the world who truly understood him and appreciated him for who he was. He supposed that he should feel grateful that John forgave him; after the anger and the explanations, he had welcomed Sherlock back into his life, and continued to work with him on cases. It was more than he deserved, and now it would have to be enough. _  
_

  
**_A white blank page and a swelling rage, rage_ **   
**_You did not think when you sent me to the brink, to the brink_ **   
**_You desired my attention but denied my affections, my affections_ **

__

          But Sherlock knew that it would _never_ be enough. John might be available _now_ to help him on cases, to spend time with him, to go out to dinner now and then, but Sherlock was no longer the most important person in John’s life. That place was now taken by Mary – and even Sherlock had to grudgingly admit that the petite blonde was the most intelligent woman John had ever dated, and was surprisingly tolerant of Sherlock stealing John away for cases on short notice. Eventually, though, that would change; it was inevitable. John and Mary would probably move into a house in the suburbs, start a family, John might even open his own practice or join an established practice as a full-time doctor, and Sherlock would be left behind. With a wife, a full-time job, and possibly children, John would no longer have time to join Sherlock on his cases. Oh, he would probably invite Sherlock over now and again, or come to visit him here at the flat, but eventually they would drift apart.

          The pain Sherlock felt in his chest when he contemplated that eventuality was so strong, it made him wince. _Is this what John felt when I left him? Like someone reached inside his chest and ripped out vital organs, leaving a gaping hole behind?_ They hadn’t discussed what John went through beyond him telling Sherlock that he had mourned the loss of his best friend, and that it hurt like hell, and _how could you do that to me, Sherlock?_ , words that had sent Sherlock reeling. _John,_ he’d said, _I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea you would be so affected._ John had railed at him, saying that in spite of his genius brain Sherlock really was thick at times, and how could he not know what he meant to him? He had continued in this vein for a while until Sherlock finally broke.

          “I did it for you!” he had shouted, his voice cracking. “I did it to save your life. And Lestrade. And Mrs. Hudson.”

          John had stopped mid-tirade, his mouth hanging open. “What do you mean?”

          Sherlock had laughed mirthlessly. “Moriarty. He had assassins trained on each of you. Unless I jumped, you would have been killed. Do you honestly think I am so heartless that I would let that happen? Do you think that I care so little for any of you, _especially_ you, John, that I could let you die?”

          John had swallowed hard, processing this new information. “Alright,” he had said, his voice thick with emotion. “So why didn’t you tell us? Or at least tell _me_ , supposedly your only friend, that you weren’t really dead? Jesus, Sherlock!”

          Sherlock had fought to maintain his composure. “It wasn’t safe. Had my survival been revealed, all of you would have been in danger again. I had to remove the threat. All of it. Remember what I said? _He’s a spider at the centre of a web, with a thousand threads and he knows precisely how each and every one of them dances?_ I had to remove the web. I worked as quickly as I could, but I had to stay hidden until it was completely destroyed. I could not take the chance that any of you might be harmed. Don’t you _see,_ John?”

_I did it for you. I did it so I could come home to you. And now you’re not here anymore._

  
**_So tell me now, where was my fault_ **   
**_In loving you with my whole heart_ **

          Sherlock curled further in on himself. He had beaten Moriarty, but in the process, he had lost John. Watching John move on with his life, move on and away from him, tore him up inside in a way he could never have predicted. How could he have known all those years ago that one short, limping Army doctor would become the centre of his universe? If he knew then what he knows now, that eventually he would lose John to someone else, that he would have to watch his best and only friend leave him behind, that the price of caring would inevitably be heartbreak, would he still have offered him the flat share?

  
_**Lead me to the truth and I** _   
_**Will follow you with my whole life**_

 

          Sherlock knew the answer, even as the tears he’d been fighting to hold back spilled down his cheeks, and his body shook with silent sobs.

          Yes. A thousand times, yes.

**Author's Note:**

> "White Blank Page" by Mumford & Sons, lyrics by Ted Dwane, Ben Lovett, Marcus Mumford and Country Marshall.


End file.
